Hi! I just wanted to create a thread for retro game fans, including what you are playing and how your collections are going.
I made my first retro gaming purchase in years recently, I’ll post a pic when it comes in, will seem innocuous but it’s a couple games I’ve wanted for a long long time.
What I’m playing wise, I was having a great time going through DKC again on Nintendo Online, still holds up so well. Hope the others come to that service soon.
Love this. I never held onto my old consoles and don’t keep a collection but still love playing games designed around that era. Put in almost 40 hours into Streets of Rage 4.
Sega Genesis is my GOAT though.
I still have my old stuff, but I don’t do a lot of collecting anymore, and a lot of my retro playing is on things like PC or Switch now.
At some point in the new future, I plan on building a full size arcade machine/emulator to sit in my home office, but can’t start day dreaming about it until I’ve finished the actual house first. 
I’m split between collecting Xbox One games and retro games.
I’m one of those collectors that went through a quarter-life existential crisis, and sold everything only to get encouraged back into the hobby from my now wife.
Got a few retro games/systems back that I love (mainly Sega) but primarily focus on Xbox collecting now. Any retro game release on Xbox One is an instant buy for me.
Will share any future retro pickups here!
Oh and yeah, Streets of Rage 4 was amazing. So glad that got a physical release on Xbox.
Magic stuff @1upmuffin
Love you
@Hue and I had a brief retro gaming discussion over in the light guns thread the other day, which made me feel like it could be fun to have a general retro gaming thread going. So I figured I’d try to resurrect this one.
As an old-ish fogey, I’ve been playing videogames about four times longer than I have not been playing videogames, and have seen many systems and generations come and go. During that time you can’t help but become attached to some games more than others, and it’s inevitable that you’ll later think back on them fondly and want to revisit them.
That’s nostalgia for you, and I think no one is immune to it, and for me that was the original entry point in becoming interested in retro gaming. But it wasn’t long after I installed my first NES emulator that I began branching out to games I had missed the first time around, as well as entire systems I had never touched when they were new.
Once you start peering into the Pandora’s box that is retro gaming, you’ll soon find a whole new world opening up to you and with those come some questions. Like, orginal hardware or PC emulation? Or new hardware capable of playing original games? Or new dedicated gaming hardware capable of emulation?
And then there’s all the new vocabulary… ROMhacking, FPGA, retrobrite, framemeister, front-end, repros…
Point is, this is a big topic and hopefully there’s enough folks here that share the retro gaming interest that we can resurrect this old OT and maybe get a bit of a conversation going.
I’ve written a long enough post already, and then some, so I’ll stop for now. But if there’s a little bit of uptake (or maybe even if there isn’t) I’ll come back later and share a bit about my own personal approach to retro gaming.
I’ve had my share of retro game purchases in the last few years and it adds up quite fast. So far I’ve got a Analogue NT (NES), Super NT (SNES), Mega SG (Genesis) and ultrahdmi modded N64 along with the everdrives for each system except the genesis as I’m still figuring out which one I’ll buy. I sold whatever games I had except for a few because I realized it was just going to be too expensive to buy everything I want so everdrives are just too convenient and you can load up hacked Roms or even betas (for example, dinosaur planet on N64) and play them with ease.
To me it was all about having HDMI capable systems as even though CRTs are tempting I know it’s all stuff that’ll end up breaking at some point so I wanted something that was compatible with modern TVs and I simply add scanlines as I like the look.
While we are on the subject of retro gaming, I’m also deep into vinyl (retro I guess) game soundtracks and it’s becoming quite the expensive hobby with out of print albums costing me 100-200$ each, but it all feels worth it in the end imo.
I used to have a really extensive collection of games on PS1, PS2, GameCube, DS, and PSP. After years of never playing most of it I got tired of looking at all of it on the shelf so I sold almost all of it off. It was mostly JRPGs and other valuable Japanese games so that got me quite a bit of change. I have never paid above retail price for a game-- most of them weren’t “retro” yet at the time I initially bought them. 
I never thought of myself as a “collector” per se, it was a backlog and I intended to actually play through all of those PS2 JRPGs… someday… But years passed and I always seemed to choose to play a new game on Xbox 360/XB1 instead of starting up Digital Devil Saga or whatever. I finally just made peace with the idea that I was never actually going to play those games and I’d rather convert them to money than watch them collect dust forever.
I still have my PS2 hooked up and a handful of games for that. Aside from that my retro gaming nowadays is limited to an SNES Classic and the library of PS1 Classics I have on PS3 and Vita. I have a ton of games on Wii Virtual Console too but the Wii is packed away at the moment.
I’m actually not 100% sure where my NES and SNES games wound up. Maybe still packed away somewhere at my parents’ house. I had Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, games like that, all with boxes and manuals… maybe I should look into this. 
I respect people with large retro collections but it’s not for me anymore. There aren’t enough hours in the day just for all the current gen stuff I want to play. I do love to watch those YouTube collection tour videos where people have complete SNES or PS1 collections and stuff like that.
Oh man, I didn’t realize we had a retro thread 
. I actually have amassed a pretty sweet collection (Super Star Wars being my crown jewel). I have slowed down the collecting as of late, but, I did just get Superman Returns in pristine condition (hey, it’s 16 years old, it counts). Also, does anyone know where I can find a copy of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine for less than $80 
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“…like why would anybody play this?”
Lol, the way game collecting is right now it’ll only get worse. I was maintaining a spreadsheet per console of the games I wanted to buy, but seeing to how much it all added up and the fact that you can’t tell the difference between playing on the real cart or an everdrive, I just sold everything I had collected so far and simply bought everdrives for the systems I owned.
It somewhat sucks as there is some fun and nostalgia in having the original game and case/instruction manual, but I can’t justify paying hundreds of dollars per game for something that’ll stay on the shelf lol. I still have all of my gaming magazines from my childhood though, love going through an old EGM or Nintendo Power once in a while to remember the good old days
It’s odd as for some of the younger folks here even PS1-PS2 is retro gaming 
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For me personally anything after 2000 holds little value in me wanting to go back to play it, there are however certain games or genres which have now died (e.g. the light gun genre which I dearly miss).
The older 2D games are perfect for mobile play and don’t seem to have aged as badly as early 3D titles.
The big thing for me is how emulators offer new functionality that we simply didn’t have back in the day. For example I managed to play online co-op with a buddy of mine on a Megadrive (genesis) game which worked flawlessly, we now live hundreds of miles apart, however it was once only possible by sitting a few feet apart staring at a terrible CRT TV .
Been gaming since the late seventies and have lots of great memories of games (especially on the Sinclair spectrum) I’ve played a couple of games recently from that era and wished I hadn’t, the games were so much better in my memories than actually playing them! Still love ‘Jet set willy’ and sabrewolf though.
Unfortunately they are never as good as you remember them 
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As I mentioned in the other thread, Goldeneye 64 was legendary at the time, I was even glued to the MP for years, however after going back and playing it I couldn’t believe how bad it was.
Even Unreal Tournament 2003-2004 which I don’t care to admit how much time and money I sunk into is bad these days (although I still feel the core gameplay is better then most modern FPS games).
Nowadays I’m all about emulation, but about 8-9 years ago I had a brief flirtation with original hardware and even got an NES and a bunch of games. But it wasn’t long before I decided I wanted some more modern conveniences like save states, portability, and whanot, so I ditched the NES and embraced emulation.
After a fair bit of research I settled on a GPD XD. This was around 2015 and I still have it, and still use it often. I chose that particular system for two reasons: 1) I love the Nintendo DS form factor, and 2) It has an HDMI port, so it can basically be used as a Nintendo Switch, where I hook it up to a monitor and use one of 8BitDo’s retropads.
Truth be told I tend to not use the HDMI port as often as I thought I would, but it’s still neat to have.
At any rate, I do play mostly modern games, but I’d guesstimate I probably beat 2-3 retro titles a year, and play around with unbeatable titles (like Pinball or Hockey or something) at least a couple of times a month. There’s just something about the 8/16/32-bit eras of gaming that I enjoy, and many of the games from those eras have aged beautifully, particularly the 16- and 32-bit eras.
I am (not) a retro gamer. Has anyone else noticed that this year a lot of games released (on Game Pass) that are a homage to games from a begone era.
For someone who didn’t grew up with gaming back in those days these games for me have been a fantastic way to experience ‘retro gaming’. I am currently playing Axiom Verge. I hope at the end of the year I finished all the listed games above and Shovel Knight.
Anyone else enjoying these modern homages to a bygone era?
Great metroidvania and its vibes are so Metroid-y.
Depends on how well made and accommodating of today’s standards they are. Loved Tunic and Prodeus, and I have SIGNALIS installed but I’m still afraid of starting it lol
I’ve been on this weird quest lately to accumulate every videogame that I possibly can. I’ve always been a big proponent of emulators and there’s no shortage of good emulator frontends that can organize everything into one place . I use Launchbox on PC but I’ve also dabbled with Botecera and I actually own an Anbernic handheld that can run everything up through Dreamcast.
Anyway, I’ve recently collected full US and Japanese sets of games for so many older systems and I’m slowly working my way through CD based systems (Currently slogging through the 2300+ games for the Saturn). It’s actually pretty crazy how playing some of these older games will open the floodgates on your memories.
I actually spent a couple of hours playing Game Boy Color games last night and I found myself having such a great time that I temporarily forgot about modern games and all the toxic drama that constantly surrounds it. I now have over 10,000 games in Launchbox and there’s this cool option to just launch a random game. I think I’m going to be doing a lot of that and maybe posting mini reviews for the games I play.
Retro gaming is greater and easier than it’s ever been and hopefully we can give this thread some much deserved love. I’ll probably create a personal top 10 or 20 list and post it in the near future, but if you guys have any games from the past that you think are “Must play” games, please let me know and I’ll check them out.
